“These Robocalls are no joke,” Blumenthal said. “They are seriously dangerous to consumers. They must be stopped. The technology exists to stop them, if only the telephone companies offered it.”

The FCC decision, finalized on Friday, was a reversal of precedent, Jessica Rosenworcel, an FCC commissioner at the Monday event, said. While she said that the agency does not usually want companies to have “editorial control” over a consumer’s phone usage, the “Robocalls” proved “so abusive and so difficult and so numerous” that she said the FCC reversed precedent. Now, with legality of blocking the calls cleared up, Rosenworcel and Blumenthal said that public pressure may force the industry’s hand and make screening-options free and widespread for consumers.

“We’d like to see is that consumers demand these en masse,” Rosenworcel said.

The phone calls pose a variety of problems. Blumenthal, a member of the Senate’s Aging Committee, said that fraudulent calls asking for money or information disproportionately affects elderly citizens, and Catherine Larsen, a consumer, said at the press conference that her home had been bombarded with up to 9 automated calls per day before her family changed phone numbers.

“We just no longer got up to get the phone,” Larsen said. Blumenthal said he expects the telephone companies to offer the services.

“The telephone companies have a moral obligation, maybe not a legal one, but a moral obligation to offer these blocking services,” he said.